


Learn From One Bird How to Sing

by withthebreezesblown



Series: Only When You Fall [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Forgiveness, Hawke at Skyhold, look purple hawke is a gift, the shit she says writes itself honestly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-06 21:11:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18859207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withthebreezesblown/pseuds/withthebreezesblown
Summary: A fill for the prompt, "things you always meant to say but never got the chance."





	Learn From One Bird How to Sing

**Author's Note:**

> A fill for a prompt from [CeleritasSagittae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CeleritasSagittae), who is wonderful, and I love her.
> 
> To be fair, I tweaked the prompt into something a little more like, "things you didn’t realize you wanted to say until you didn’t have the chance."

Marian likes the Inquisitor. Er, both of her, the woman younger than she’d expected who she’d met first on the battlements, already cynically amused with the world, and the quietly assessing Marcher noble who stands in the war room and in front of crowds, steady and calm and unruffleable. The one is as familiar as a friend. The other invokes a sort of reluctant admiration, though it’s not a tack she’d ever try.

The war room meetings are a bit tedious, but she had found some amusement in taunting Kirkwall’s former Knight Captain at the last one, leaning in and whispering at a volume as loud as the Inquisitor’s steady speech, “You know, Knight Captain, I _did_ wonder what had happened to the Gallow’s Tranquil, but judging by the amount of… ointment in your hair to tame those rebellious curls, I feel I can safely assume you’ve put them all to work in some kind of hair-ointment-making dungeon. Tell me, does subduing your curls give you the same satisfaction as subduing mages? Do you think of each curl like a tiny little rebel that you, good templar that you are, must bring to order?”

He had not been amused. She’s contemplating how best to attempt to get a rise out of him today–probably a pleasantly tossed out comment about how the Inquisitor isn’t _really_ a person, not like herself and Cullen–when she catches hushed voices carrying down the hallway from the open door ahead.

Cullen and the Inquisitor. _Ah_. Well, yes. She had noticed. It’s the reason she’s so amused with the idea of telling the Inquisitor that her Commander doesn’t think she’s actually a person. She’d seen how his eyes linger on the woman. How, when she’d mocked him about his hair, the only softening in his stony scowl had been as he assessed the Inquisitor’s reaction. For a man so concerned with discipline, he doesn’t have nearly as much control over his face as he seems to think.

She’s enjoying the idea of bursting in and ruining the moment when she catches the tone of the conversation. These are not soft words being shared. …The two are arguing.

“You will _not_ inquire about his whereabouts! It’s irrelevant! The Inquisition’s role is to restore order, _not_ to go around deciding who will and will not be punished for things that are in the past!”

“And you can’t see that holding the apostate who started all of this accountable _would_ restore a measure of order?”

She feels her body clench with all the conflict that always comes when Anders is mentioned, when she finds herself having to defend him, defend his actions. To defend what she, deep down, does not think she will ever be certain _is_ defensible.

But suddenly the Inquisitor isn’t speaking in a hushed voice anymore. It isn’t even the calm, carrying tones that she uses when she’s being the Marcher noble, the _Inquisitor_. It isn’t any iteration of the woman that Marian has seen yet.

She’s furious. She’s loud and unrepentant.

“I _do_ hold him accountable! Don’t you see?! I never would have wanted it to happen the way it _did_ , but don’t you _see_?! When all _you_ had to say was, ‘Hush,’ and, ‘Be a good girl,” her voice is bitter, disgusted as she spits out the words, “ _he_ said, ‘ _Enough_.’ _He_ said, ‘ _No more_.’ And if he hadn’t I would have _died_ in that Circle, _hushing_ and _being a good girl_! I am _so sorry_ for all the chaos and all the death, but _every single morning_ when I try the handle of my bedroom door and it _isn’t locked_ , I hold Anders _accountable_.” She finally draws a deep breath, though her voice is only marginally calmer when she continues. “Was there another way? I don’t know. Maybe. All I _know_ is that _that man_ gave me what _no one_ who loved me–my father, my brother, my uncle, templars once if not now, all of them–could or would. He gave me _myself_. And if you ever presume to try to punish him, you’ll have to pull _my_ cold, dead body out of the way to get to him.”

It shocks Marian. She’s seen the gratitude that those once imprisoned feel for her lover, seen mages fall at his feet in tears, but _this_ from Evelyn Trevelyan, a girl whose close knit family had turned out more templars than nobles, a girl known to have been doted on and adored by her family despite the magic that shamed them. As Inquisitor, she has been moderate, has shown sympathy to templars looking to join their cause despite having recruited the mages to help her close the Breach.

Marian thinks suddenly that there are things that, even after all this time, she has never fully understood. How could she? It’s one of the things he loves about her: her freedom. For all the times she found herself feeling like she has been given no choices in life, she’s never really understood what it meant to live without freedom, to have to make her very _self_ small enough to fit someone else’s expectations of her.

She suddenly finds herself missing Anders so bad it hurts to breathe. She wants to hold his rough stubbled cheeks in her hands and rest her head against his, nose to nose, mouth to mouth. She wants to whisper against his lips the words he’s never asked her to say. _I forgive you_.


End file.
